Transcript Mount Point

10.4 File System Mounting
 A file system must be mounted before it can be accessed
 A unmounted file system (i.e. Fig. 10-11(b)) is mounted at
a mount point
existing
Operating System Principles
unmounted volume
10.1
mount point
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Mount Point
1. The OS is first given the name of the device and the mount point
2. The OS verifies that the device contains a valid file system

Read the device directory and verify the directory format
3. The OS notes in the directory structure that a file system is
mounted at the specified mount point
4. If the volume is unmounted, the file system is restored to the
situation before mounting

OS may impose semantics to clarify functionality

May disallow a mount over a directory containing files; or may
obscure the directory’s existing files until the file system is unmounted

May allow the same file system to be mounted repeatedly, at different
mount points; or it may allow only one mount per file system
Operating System Principles
10.2
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Mount Examples
 Macintosh searches for a file system on a disk first
encountered. If found, the file system is auto-mounted at
the root level
 Windows OS maintains an extended two-level directory
structure, with devices and volumes assigned drive letters.

Recent Windows allow a file system to be mounted anywhere in
the directory tree

Windows auto-discover all devices and mount all located file
systems at boot time
 Unix has explicit mount commands
Operating System Principles
10.3
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10.5 File Sharing
 Sharing of files on multi-user systems is desirable
 Sharing may be done through a protection
scheme
 On distributed systems, files may be shared
across a network
 Network File System (NFS) is a common
distributed file-sharing method
Operating System Principles
10.4
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File Sharing – Multiple Users
 File sharing, file naming, and file protection are important in
multiple-user systems

The system may allow a user to access other user’s files by
default or it may require specific access grant
 Most systems use the concept of file owner and group, as file
attributes, to implement file sharing and protection

User IDs identify users, allowing permissions and
protections to be per-user

Group IDs allow users to be in groups, permitting group
access rights
Operating System Principles
10.5
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File Sharing – Remote File Systems
 Uses networking to allow file system access between
systems

Manually via programs like FTP
 Both
anonymous and authenticated access

Automatically, seamlessly using distributed file
systems, in which remote directories are visible from a
local machine

Semi automatically via the world wide web, where a
browser is needed to access remote files, and separate
operations (a wrapper for ftp) are used to transfer files
Operating System Principles
10.6
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The Client-Server Model
 Client-server model allows clients to mount remote
file systems from servers

Server can serve multiple clients

Client, specified by a network name or IP address, and
user-on-client identification is insecure or complicated (by
encryption)

NFS is standard UNIX client-server file sharing protocol
 User’s
ID on the client and server must match
 Once
the remote file system is mounted, file operation
requests are sent on behalf of the user across the network to
the server via the DFS protocol
 Standard
operating system file calls are translated into
remote calls
Operating System Principles
10.7
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Distributed Information Systems
 Also known as distributed naming services
 LDAP, DNS, NIS (network information service, yellow
pages), Active Directory implement unified access to
information needed for remote computing
 In Windows CIFS (common internet file system),
network information is used with user authentication to
create a network login. A newer version is called active
directory.
 One distributed LDAP (lightweight directory-access
protocol) could be used by an organization to store all
user and resource information for all organization’s
computers. The result is secure single sign-on for
users.
Skip 10.5.2.3, 10.5.3
Operating System Principles
10.8
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10.6 Protection
 Reliability is to keep the computer system from physical
damage. (Chapter 12)
 Protection is to keep it from improper access.
 File owner/creator should be able to control:

what can be done

by whom
 Basic types of controlled access

Read

Write

Execute

Append

Delete

List
Operating System Principles
Other high-level functions, like copying and
editing files may be implemented by making
lower-level system calls
10.9
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Access Control Lists
 Mode of access: read, write, execute
 Three classes of users
a) owner access
7

b) group access
6

c) public access
1

rwx
111
rwx
110
rwx
001
 Ask manager to create a group (unique name), say G, and add
some users to the group.
 For a particular file (say game) or subdirectory, define an
appropriate access.
owner
chmod
group
public
761
game
Attach a group to a file
chgrp
Operating System Principles
G
game
10.10
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Windows XP Access-control List Management
Operating System Principles
10.11
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A Sample UNIX Directory Listing
Operating System Principles
10.12
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Other Protection Approaches
 Associate a password with each file

Disadvantages
 The
number of passwords that a user needs to remember
 If only one password is used for all the files, then
protection is on an all-or-none basis
–
Some system allow the user to associate a password with a
directory
 Adding protection mechanisms to single-user OS is
difficult
 Directory protection

Control the creation and deletion of files in a directory

Control whether a user could check the existence of a
file in a directory. (Listing the contents of a directory)
Operating System Principles
10.13
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